If you're a London commuter, the Tube already gets you from home to work, and wherever else. Now it could wash your clothes for you — sort of.

That's the promise of VDrop, a fleet of smartphone-controlled vending machines that dry cleaning startup VClean Life is installing at London Underground stations. Shove your dirty clothes into a supplied biodegradable bag with a barcode, and for £3 an item the company will pick them up, wash them at its facility in Watford, and return them for pickup within 24 hours

Advertisement

The startup's baskets aren't actually inside Transport for London (TfL) tube stations, but out in the car park. "We found [inside the station] a difficult place to put them," says founder Nick Harris. "Because we don't want to interfere, or step on anyone's toes at TfL with the actual running of the station." That said, he argues having the VDrops outside in the carpark is handy for drive-by drop-offs and VClean staff picking up, as well as for security.

It's difficult to imagine TfL allowing a large dry cleaning receptacle in stations when most don't even have bins for fear of bombs. Harris notes the VDrops are covered by high-definition CCTV and are made from thick steel. "If you know anything about TfL you'll know we had to go through every imaginable hurdle to pass security tests." A spokesperson for TfL said any retailer or installation on its network had to pass a range of checks “to ensure that there are no security concerns or impact to the operational running of our stations”.

Read next

Harris says 200 VDrops will be rolled out across London this year. As well as at select Tube stations, they are also likely to crop up at gyms, offices and shopping malls. The first site at Epping will be followed by additional trials at Loughton, North Greenwich, South Woodford, and Woodford. If successful, VDrop could be extended across the network, though additional approval would be needed. Aside from the Tube, further rollouts are planned elsewhere in the UK, with Harris suggesting rail companies were also interested.

David Parry/PA Wire

Advertisement

To use the drop-off service, you'll first have to register at VClean Life, where you'll get a QR code to scan at VDrops. Head over to Epping Station's car park and scan that code, and the VDrop will spit out a biodegradable bag for your clothes and a ticket to include for tracking. You'll get an email when they're ready to pick up; scan in again to take your fresh clothes away.

Laundry is the latest focus for startups targeting lazy urban dwellers. Laundrapp, launched in 2014, will pick up your clothes from your home or office to wash or dry clean; Zipjet and Love2Laundry offer similar app-based services, though plenty of drycleaners offer pick up and delivery the old-fashioned way, via a phone call. Harris suggested that at £3 an item VClean Life's VDrop service was "incredibly, ridiculously cheap," though prices at rivals Laundrapp and Zipjet also start from £2.50 a shirt and increase for more complicated jobs.

Neither party would reveal how much VClean Life was paying TfL to house the VDrops, though both referred to it as a "commercial" deal. And it's not the first time transit stations have been used as pick up and drop off points either. Parcel pickup service Doddle has tried offering pickup points in train stations, while TfL has trialled grocery pickup in tube station car parks.

Advertisement

"We are always looking at ways to improve our offering to customers and are happy to discuss with other retailers who may wish to vend on our network," a TfL spokesperson said. With high footfall and convenience for commuters, stations could become hubs for such services, and help TfL prop up its falling budgets.

Perhaps the real innovation isn't digitally managed dropboxes for dirty work shirts, but the cleaning itself. VClean Life uses what it calls "wet cleaning", as opposed to standard dry cleaning. Instead of chemicals that are harsh on the environment and us, such as widely used perchloroethylene, "wet cleaning" simply uses biodegradable soaps and conditioners. Clothes labelled "dry clean only" can also be washed via this process, Harris says.

"Traditional dry cleaning is all about getting rid of grease and oil stains, not necessarily washing a garment," he explains. "We actually wash every garment, whether it be a leather jacket or silk wedding dress, with water in a high-tech manner with soaps and conditioners." Whether anyone is willing to drop their Vera Wang frock into an unmanned box in a carpark to be wet washed remains to be seen.